With the next Bills game falling on Christmas Eve, we figured we should combine some traditional Christmas fare with traditional Buffalo Football Food! In one corner (of the plate), representing Christmas, we have Wellington! And in the other corner, we have Buffalo Chicken!
The good news is that this dish didn’t turn into a fight between the foods, as they merged together gloriously. To start, as we expected, the buttery flakiness of the puff pastry complemented the heat of the Buffalo Sauce and additional cayenne to provide a nice balance. But, we did have a handful of problems to solve to make this dish work:
- Flavour:
- We needed to swap out the traditional ingredients (Duxelles, Pate, Mustard, etc.) for ones that paired better with our overall Buffalo flavour profile. So, we needed to find a way to build celery and blue cheese in to take the place of those other ingredients.
- Traditional Wellington ingredients are wrapped in prosciutto to keep everything together. However, we thought the saltiness would be a detriment in this case.
- All of the flavour alterations presented a new challenge for us though…Texture:
- Without prosciutto, we needed something dry enough that it would not create puddles in the pan and moist enough that it would be edible. This required a two pronged approach:
- Chicken. We needed a way to keep the chicken moist, so we broke out the old sous vide, coated our chicken in cayenne powder, and cooked it that way ahead of time. That said, you can also cook your chicken in a slow cooker and then shred it, as that would have a similar effect on the dish in the end…it’s really preference as to whether you prefer a hunk of chicken or whisps of it.
- Celery/Onion. Borrowing in part from Ethiopian style cooking, we decided to give these veggies the “Duxelles” treatment. So, we pureed the onion and celery together, which gave us a very liquidy mixture…then we heated a dry pan and added the two veggies. We cooked them down until they were dry and adhered together well enough. With the moisture cooked out, this pair added a little hint of sweetness to the dish too, which was really good with the other flavours.
- Also due to the texture, we opted to add our Buffalo sauce at the end as more of a finishing touch and rely on the cayenne powder to build some heat in the interior.
- Without prosciutto, we needed something dry enough that it would not create puddles in the pan and moist enough that it would be edible. This required a two pronged approach:
Time: 70 Minutes (Plus time to precook your chicken…this will vary depending on your method)
Ingredients:
- PreCooked Chicken Breast. Any of these would work:
- We coated our chicken breast with Cayenne and put it in the Sous Vide for 2 hours at 150 degrees F
- Pulled Chicken
- Frozen Grilled Chicken Strips
- Celery
- Onion
- Crumbled Blue Cheese
- Ground Cayenne
- Puff Pastry
- Buffalo Sauce
Method:
- Prep your chicken ahead of time (or use pre-cooked). Our two suggested methods are:
- Coat in cayenne, place in zip top bags, squeeze air out through water displacement, and cook in a sous vide at 150 degrees F for 2 hours. Then, after it’s cooked, cut each chicken breast down the middle lengthwise to create two chicken strips.
- Coat in cayenne, and slow cook for 4 hours. Then, shred the chicken with two forks.
- Set your puff pastry out to defrost.
- Chop your onion coarsely, and do the same with your celery. Then, add them both to your food processor, and let it nearly puree the two.
- Heat a pan (no oil/butter in it), and add your celery/onions. Cook, stirring occasionally to remove the liquids.
- As your celery/onions cook, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F, and line a baking sheet with some foil. Give the foil a quick oil spray.
- Use a rolling pin to flatten your puff pastry a bit as needed to ensure the sheet is big enough to envelop your ingredients.
- Place a chicken strip or some pulled chicken on your puff pastry sheet. Then, scoop some of your onion/celery mixture, and crumble on some blue cheese.
- Fold the sides of your puff pastry dough over the ends of your chicken, and then roll it all up. Place it on your baking sheet, and continue to do this until all of your Wellingtons are made.
- Use a sharp knife to cut little ventilation slits in the top of each Wellington.
- Stash in the oven for about 45 minutes until your dough puffs up and turns golden brown.
- Remove from the oven, and transfer to a cutting board.
- Slice, and plate.
- Drizzle your Buffalo sauce atop, devour, and enjoy!
